This Young, Hugely Versatile Liverpool Squad Has Everything Xabi Alonso (Or Someone Else) Needs
No arguments – the best squad Liverpool have ever had
If I didn’t believe so much in the newly revamped Liverpool squad, as I did from before this season even started (as regular readers will know), then I would be far more nervous about the handover.
There’s been so much despair and catastrophising about Jürgen Klopp leaving, and as such, it seems right to focus on the positives.
Which isn’t to say it will be easy or automatic. But Klopp’s greatest gift could be his legacy, if handled correctly.
The part-time Director of Football, Jörg Schmadtke, was appointed simply to appease Klopp, and fair enough; others had left in part as the transfer policy shifted more towards Klopp and Pep Lijnders, and again, a manager as good as Klopp earns that right, and the people behind the scenes knew and respected that.
So, how do you give new contracts to players when there’s no DoF, and no new manager in place?
It couldn’t be done before the announcement (as Klopp said, you can’t get them to sign, and only then say the manager is leaving), whilst tapping up managers in December would have led to anarchy if it leaked. How do you find a new DoF when there’s a temporary one in place, again without tipping your hand? It’s a very awkward situation, but one we’d have all taken in order to keep Klopp happy for as long as possible.
Equally, there’s at least one outstanding candidate for manager (Xabi Alonso), and he seems like someone very strong-minded but also reasonable, who could work with any equally reasonable DoF; he’s not at Klopp’s level of full control. You could appoint a DoF to dovetail with Alonso, rather than get a DoF to then find a manager. (It’s key that they can work together, mind.)
To have denied Klopp more transfer control would have been to bridle and constrain. I wrote back in 2020 that Michael Edwards, Ian Graham and all the other brilliant people were very hugely important, but Klopp was the difference maker.
With Klopp leading the way since 2020 (but with their heavier inputs on players signed before then), a squad that looked on the wane, and a manager (for a while) looking too attached to old players, contributed to the current mixture of established brilliance and up-and-coming talent, that had me say in the summer that it’s the best squad Liverpool have ever had.
If anything, it just looks better and better.
So yes, I was worried a year ago, but the introduction of Stefan Bajcetic was the key for my renewed belief: a kid I’d seen shine in the U18s, and who had a bit of everything.
On his own, Bajcetic was just one player, but he signalled the new direction. Next, Trent Alexander-Arnold was redeployed and a new tactical blueprint was in place, and Curtis Jones and Cody Gakpo added energy and elite pressing. The average age was lower, and there was a spark again.
Ironically, Bajcetic has barely played since last spring due to a young, developing body being asked to do too much too soon in the absence of quality and energy (and fit midfielders) around him, and set him back with growing-related injuries, but he set the tone. (Just as Conor Bradley excelled in 60 games last season but ended up with a stress fracture of the back.) Bajcetic is still only 19.
Instead, Klopp and all his staff leave an incredible squad.
New ideas and methods to develop younger players always takes years to produce first-teamers, as a pipeline never starts with an overflow. You have to find the right kids with the right assets and attributes at a younger age, then wait. Now they’re flooding out the pipes, in part due to injuries to others.
I spent last season and this summer raving about Bradley, talking about the massive potential of Jarell Quansah, and in the summer, all four new midfield signings impressed me in different ways. I felt players like Curtis Jones would go up a level, as would Harvey Elliott. All young players can go up a level, each season, even if they may stall for a while here and there.
I did lose a bit of faith in Darwin Núñez, and wondered if Mo Salah could still cut it (and if he’d still want to), but Núñez, for all his misses, tires out the opposition and creates space and chances for others, and Salah, playing deeper and wider, sets others up and then arrives later in the box to score goals. Both score and/or assist at an incredible rate.
It’s also a squad containing zero deadwood.
A year ago, there was Arthur, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (who had sadly become deadwood towards the end), Naby Keïta (ditto), and while they would have had their uses, the awkward phasing out of Jordan Henderson and James Milner meant two players who, in 2023, were older than any now in 2024. That was a lot of wages, for non-first-XI players.
Of course, go back to when Klopp arrived and there was more deadwood than Tunguska.
You could argue that, right now, a couple of the injury-prone players could be surplus to requirements, but Joël Matip was excellent before injury struck (again), and Thiago Alcântara is a player a new manager may love, if fit (a big if); but if not, both can leave in the summer for free. Thiago is back and full training and I’d love him to stay.
(If the new manager is to be Alonso, he knows Alcântara well from their time together at Bayern, and I see Thiago as a potential future coach, albeit I’d expect him to want to play to his mid-30s if his body holds up.)
I’m also still struggling with this strange idea that, if given the job, Alonso – whose football is modern and sophisticated, just like Liverpool’s but just with a slightly different emphasis – wouldn’t play to the strengths of the players he would inherit, but stick to what he is currently doing with a different set of (inferior) players.
This feels like ‘tactical ideologue’ thinking. And not how a smart coach would work in reality.
You keep your core values (possession, pressing, progressive approach), but shape things around those, with the unique set of players you inherit, and the unique skills they have, and the patterns and ideas that are already working, if they can be kept and tweaked towards your own style.
Then, you maybe buy one or two specialists if required.
(As I said the other day, if you’re a manager whose teams don’t dribble and you inherited peak-years Lionel Messi, you dribble.)
A bit more short passing would be fine, but Alonso may not currently have the world-class longer passers that the Reds have; it’s unlikely that Leverkusen would have had them already, or that he could have afforded to buy them last summer.
Telling elite long passers who could pass like the man himself to only play 10-yarders would make zero sense. Maybe you mix it up more, but Liverpool already mix the long and the short, and the medium. Indeed, Alonso’s current tactics were shaped around inheriting a team struggling to defend.
We know the rich array of attacking options at the club, but I make it that Liverpool have nine established senior midfielders, several more kids (one excelling out on loan), and two elite full-backs who have played in midfield. All from the ruins of last season’s midfield crisis.
But whoever the new manager is, they will not bring an exact imprint of what they do now, nor will they be able to exactly match what the current team does.
For example, Alonso’s team pass short a lot, but also carry the ball a lot. Liverpool have players who can do both. And do more. The balance will never be the same with different players in a different league.
Looking at the data, Leverkusen and Bayern Munich are miles ahead of the rest of the German league for progressive carries and also progressive passes.
The chart below shows that Leverkusen and Bayern also pass and carry in a more progressive nature than the top Premier League teams, but it’s much of a muchness; certainly Alonso’s side plays hugely ‘progressive’ football.
(I threw in Brentford and West Ham to show the lower end of the progressive scale. And given that they’ve spent similarly, you can see with Brighton how differently they do things on a smaller budget compared to a Thomas Frank or David Moyes side, to be up with the proper progressive teams. Obviously Leverkusen’s budget is nowhere close to Bayern’s, yet they match their progressive numbers almost exactly, with other German clubs miles behind. Again, this is why I don’t think Thomas Frank’s tactics would scale up, even if you never know for sure, but Roberto de Zerbi looks like his could; with the next factor if they’d handle the pressure, and other ‘cultural fit’ issues.)
Plus, Leverkusen average pretty much the same percentage of possession as Liverpool and the other elite teams. (Over 60%.) And as I noted last week, Klopp’s Liverpool have evolved, and change within single seasons.
So I don’t see Alonso as anything other than an excellent fit, tactically and culturally. (Which doesn’t mean other managers couldn’t tick a lot of boxes, too.)
Squad Brilliance
I’ll go over it again: the absolutely mind-blowing versatility of this current squad (c.30 players, none aged over 32, and including a couple of the best starlets out on loan), compared to what may have existed in the past.
This is my version of a depth chart where I rate players on a mix of factors (quality for age, potential to improve, and recent form with caveats for those injured). I’ll explain who is who later in the piece.
It includes four players out on loan who I think are good enough to have a first-team future at Liverpool, but obviously, as with the kids who have played for the Reds this season, they cannot all succeed, given that 28 players are listed, which means eight won’t even be making the first-team squad.
And it does not even include Owen Beck, Luke Chambers, James McConnell, Kaide Gordon, Bobby Clark, Ben Doak and Trey Nyoni, who are all elite or close to elite for their age.
It also excludes Adrian, given his age and status as third choice, as well as Nat Phillips, Rhys Williams and other players with unlikely futures at the club…
… and it’s still TWENTY-EIGHT players.
Not only can most of the players play in various positions, but they can do so many things with and without the ball that they would fit any progressive style of football.
Again, I spoke about Bradley last season, and in the summer, and look at how many skills he brings, and how different he is to Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez.
I can’t think of any type of player Liverpool lack, and indeed don’t have multiples of, bar a proper target man who excels in the air (Darwin Núñez is good in the air but not dominant; Cody Gakpo is 6’4” but not an aggressive aerial player).
And that doesn’t sound like a lot of modern managers’ priority anyway.
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